- August 31, 2023
Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington by Joanna Moorhead
The work of surrealist artist and writer Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) glimmers with its own sideways species of magic, her landscapes like incantations spun from gilded half-light, run through with a revolving cast of ghosts and chimeras, haunted horses and glowing eggs. Given the mysteriousness of ...
Read more… - August 24, 2023
Inspired by his own grandmother, the novel follows Pearl Kahn and her sister Frieda as they escape their shtetl in Poland after WWI and try to get to America. Immigration laws keep them out of the country, however, so they are forced to bide their time in Cuba. It’s a fresh look at the immigrant ...
Read more… - August 17, 2023
Set in South Boston in 1974 when court ordered school busing began, this book skillfully evokes the joy and the tragedy of the whole time period. Though this is fiction, it is rich in the details of the city at the time and very believable. I know. I was living there then.
-Mary Ellen, Interlibrary Loan
This ...
Read more… - August 9, 2023
It’s been a summer full of great weather for reading! A rainy June, a humid July, and some clear August skies have given PFL staff a chance to sit down with some great books. Read on for the list of our favorite titles of standouts new and old.
The All of It by Jeannette Haien
The Covenant ...
Read more… - August 3, 2023
A wealthy family, a private island, unreliable narrators, and secrets, secrets, secrets! The perfect summer read.
The Sinclair family has summered on their private island off the coast of Massachusetts for generations. The cousins swim, eat, and adventure in what used to seem like paradise. But this summer, everything is different. Ever since Cady’s accident two ...
Read more… - July 20, 2023
Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic, by Emily Monosson
Several summers ago, I developed an earache that dragged on for weeks until one day whilst at work blood began dripping from my ear, at which time I conceded that it might be prudent to seek medical attention. As it happened, a fungus had taken shelter in ...
Read more… - July 13, 2023
The Exile Reviewed by Sarah Maciejewski.
If you enjoy westerns and/or Viking revenge stories, I recommend checking out our new graphic novel, The Exile, by Erik Kriek.
When Hallstein Thordsson returns to Iceland after having been banished for seven years, he is alarmed to find that things haven’t changed all that much. He is determined to defend ...
Read more… - June 8, 2023
Shut Up and Play the Hits!
Reviewed by Sarah Maciejewski.
In honor of Talking Heads’ seminal music documentary Stop Making Sense being re-released in theaters later this year, I would like to recommend another concert film by another band, LCD Soundsystem. (But, also, if you have never seen Stop Making Sense, or even if you have, go ...
Read more… - April 20, 2023
Wail Song, by Chaun Webster
Wail Song, released this month, submerges readers in the belly of the whale at the bottom of the ocean at the end of our world: the abyssal zone of what it means to be human, or mammal, born beneath dark water far from any safe shore, yet still drawing breath. Chaun ...
Read more… - April 12, 2023
It is fitting that April is the month of poetry, when poems burst out of dormant minds and flower our consciousness. A celebration of words, a celebration of life. Poetry feels to me like a first language, when atomic particles of words fuse into strings of meaning and we know at once that something has ...
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